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Evenings of Faith are organised by the Faith Movement to address important themes in theology for lay people. The meetings are held in the parish rooms below the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory, Warwick Street, W1 by kind permission of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. Access is via 24 Golden Square (a short walk from Piccadilly Circus.) The talks all begin at 7.30pm.

I gave one of the talks in the last series. There was a good gathering of people, intelligent discussion, and time to chat afterwards over coffee and later in a nearby pub.

Here is the list for the forthcoming third series:
Wednesday 26 February 2014
The Church of Jesus Christ: The 'ecosystem' of manFr William Massie

Wednesday 12 March 2014
The Church’s Magisterium: Why must it be part of God's communing with Man?Fr Mark Vickers

Photo credit (all photos): Mulier Fortis
The Day With Mary is a spiritually powerful event in the parish. Not only does it give a boost to the faith and devotion of those present, it has the feeling of making a real contribution to the treasury of merits of the Church with the assistance of Our Blessed Lady and under her powerful protection.

Fortescue has a famous footnote about not genuflecting at the top of a ladder when retrieving the monstrance from a throne (I am grateful for his prudent advice) but he says little more about liturgical ladders. When I was crowning the statue of Our Lady, the assistants did well to retain hold of the cope without showing the orphreys.

Yesterday morning was fine and we took the Procession of Our Lady around the streets. Sung Mass followed.

The beautiful Marian vestment is currently on loan to the parish. It is shown well here at the Et Verbum caro factum est:

Being burned out of your home and threatened with death for not being a Muslim? Fear being persuaded that it is in your best interests to be bumped off before you get any older? Getting no sympathetic publicity from Western media (or no publicity at all)? Here is your answer: dress up as a giraffe and the world's press will give several pages of coverage with soul-searching debate skewed in your favour, celebrities will take up your cause, and you will probably be granted asylum somewhere friendly.

The ghastly decision of the Belgian Parliament to legalise the euthanasia of children has rightly drawn much comment from Catholic journalists and bloggers, many of whom have referred to the Nazi euthanasia programme. I thought it would be helpful to look more closely at the origins of this

Some years ago, I wrote a post called "The life thou gavest, Lord, we've ended" which drew on an article written in 1980 by Malcolm Muggeridge: The Humane Holocaust. See the article for more details but essentially, Muggeridge pointed out that euthanasia for the mentally ill and physically disabled was introduced in Germany in the 1920s, before the Nazi movement had gained any prominence. It was doctors and psychiatrists who pushed the programme on utilitarian grounds. When the Nazis developed Aktion T4, they extended euthanasia to children, vastly increased the numbers who were killed, and extended the grounds from disability to race. But the perverted legal and medical justificatio…

Even the Wall Street Journal characterised this as The U.N. Assault on the Catholic Church, calling it "an attempt to bully the church into bowing before the altar of Turtle Bay." (Turtle Bay is the neighbourhood in New York where the UN Headquarters is located.) Claudia Rosett effectively exposes the hypocrisy of the UN ("Blue berets accused of sex crimes are simply sent back to their home countries, where in the majority of cases they drop off the r…

The indefatigable Fr Andrew Pinsent has produced five posters which I think are ideal to help people re-assess the bias against Catholicism that they may have unwittingly imbibed from the secular environment. They are entirely positive, giving examples of Catholics who have made a major contribution to our science and culture. They would be ideal for secondary schools, but also for Church Halls, especially those that are hired out to people. (We will be getting some for Blackfen.) In fact, the whole project is a fine example of the positive evangelisation which Pope Benedict - and indeed Pope Francis - have called for.

The subjects of the posters are:George Lemaître (the Belgian priest who proposed the Big Bang theory)Gregor Mendel (the Augustinian friar who was the founder of the new science of genetics)Guido d’Arezzo (the Medieval music theorist who invented musical notation as we know it today)Maria Agnesi (an Italian noble lady of great learning, the first woman to be appointed M…

Many Catholic organisations promote Fair Trade products but I have some misgivings about the scheme. Is it a sin not to buy Fair Trade products?Criticism of Fair Trade comes from both ends of the political spectrum. Some free market economists argue that Fair Trade interferes with the proper working of supply and demand and that other producers are adversely affected by the distortion of prices. Some advocates of more sweeping changes to unjust trading argue that Fair Trade is not radical enough because it works within the existing system of trade and has partnerships with multinational companies.

Those in favour of Fair Trade would reply that it is a market-responsive model of trade and that other producers are positively, not negatively affected. They would consider that it is better to promote realistic and achievable change rather than waiting for the whole trading system to be made fairer.

Fair Trade is widely supported by Catholic organisations, and many parishes try to use Fair…

Aid to the Church in Need continues in its sterling work not only in giving practical down-to-earth support to persecuted Christians but also by providing solid information on their appalling plight. Their latest freely downloadable report Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faithgives a comprehensive update on the worldwide persecution of millions of Christians at the present time. Here is their press information on the booklet:
In recent years, the Catholic Charity Aid to the Church in Need has received a growing response from government figures, politicians, the media, Church leaders and faithful to their seminal research project: Persecuted and Forgotten? A Report on Christians oppressed for their Faith.

Such has been the growth in recognition of ACN’s vital work, that their National Director, Neville Kyrke-Smith, and report editor John Pontifex, were recently invited to a Reception at Clarence House in which HRH The Prince of Wales called upon Chr…

Please note that I do not normally publish recruitment adverts. This is an exception because it is the Good Counsel Network. They are looking for someone committed to their work who has fundraising experience. It is a 0.6 post with salary of £25,000 pro rata.

The Maria Stops Abortion blog has the basic information and an email address for further information.

I tend to give money when people shake a box in front of me but I feel I should organise this a bit more. Would that lose the spontaneity of giving?Remember that having charitable status in law does not necessarily mean that an organisation is always doing things that exhibit love for God or our neighbour. “Reproductive health” (a pseudonym for providing contraceptions and abortion) and research on human embryos would be considered “charitable” aims in civil law, but are immoral and therefore not truly “loving.” When someone shakes a box in front of you, there is no moral obligation to give money. In fact, it would be better to find out about the “Charity” first in order to be sure that it is charitable as we would understand the word.

Your desire for spontaneity illustrates how we have lost the true meaning of charity. We should not love simply when we feel the urge, but as a part of our Christian lives. Our holidays do not suffer if we plan them carefully beforehand. Our love for ot…

In June 2009, Neil Addison of the Thomas More Legal Centre and Religion Law Blog, argued that it was not surprising that Catholic Adoption Agencies had lost their case before the Charities Tribunal because they were using an ineffective legal argument. (See: Catholic Adoption Agencies lose case) The legal defeat led to Catholic agencies either giving up adoption work or continuing with the work, becoming a non-Catholic agency, and being open to placing children with same-sex couples.

Neil has constantly argued that Catholic adoption agencies should make a case based on adherence to their constitution in which they assert that all of their activities (not just adoption) have to be conducted in accordance with the teaching of the Catholic Church (not just on the question of same-sex unions but on any moral question, including, for example unmarried couples.) This, he has always argued, would fit the exemption for Charities under reg 18 of the Sexual Orientation Regulations 2007.

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I am happy to pass on the following information concerning the forthcoming Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy. Unfortunately I will not be able to attend myself this time, but I pass on the notice with my support and recommendation.
Booking is now open for the Autumn Colloquium of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy, which this year takes place at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, from Wednesday 15th till Thursday 16th November.

Speakers include Bishop John Keenan of Paisley, Monsignor John Armitage (Rector of the Shrine at Walsingham) and Father John Saward.

I am trying to pray the Office each day. Should I only use the official breviary or can I use the Little Office of Our Lady?
The second Vatican Council encouraged lay people to pray the Divine Office; indeed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy encouraged parish priests to see that Vespers are celebrated in Churches on Sundays, something that is quite rare nowadays. So it is an excellent practice for you as a lay person to pray at least a part of the Office. By doing so, you unite yourself to the whole Church in the prayer which Christ offers up as our High Priest. It is rightly called a sacrifice of praise when we pray the psalms to sanctify the hours of the day.

Priests and religious are bound to celebrate the Divine Office every day and must use the Office that is approved for them. Secular priests, for example, must use either the Liturgy of the Hours (the Office that was composed after Vatican II) or the older breviary that was approved before the Council. Lay people who are no…

When I was a student in Rome, I remember going with a priest for Mass in one of the ancient Churches. The priest said that he was going to use Eucharistic Prayer II because it was the most ancient of all the prayers and was specifically Roman, composed by Hippolytus. This was the standard view at that time (early 1980s) but has since been called into question. A number of people have recently mentioned the matter to me and so here are a few notes for you.

In the 19th century, a number of ancient texts were discovered that were similar to the "Apostolic Constitutions", (of which the first modern edition was published in 1563). Among these texts was a document which came to be referred to as the “Egyptian Church Order”. In addition, the Canons of Hippolytus and the Testamentum Domini were discovered.

The scholarly consensus in the early 20th century on the dependence of these documents was that the “Egyptian Church Order” was in fact the "Apostolic Tradition" of Hippol…

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions:

The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgencePope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina. Norm 7 states:To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.”It is worth reading the other norms because …

The first is the most fundamental. Kwasniewski rightly says that it should be engaged before examining any particular principle behind the new lectionary. It is the question of the purpose or function of reading the scriptures at Mass. As he puts it:
“Is it a moment of instruction for the people, or is it an element of the latreutic worship offered by Christ and His Mystical Body to the Most Holy Trinity.”
He affirms that what we may call the doxological purpose is primary.

This question determines any subsequent discussion of what passages are chosen, how they are distribut…